PSF's 2010 Writers' Poll
Our favorite things

Can it already be another year and another poll of our PSF writers? Guess so and that means that our crew lets loose with 20 of their favorite albums (or less if they like). Also note that some of the lists are kind of unconventional (which we approve of, needless to say). As usual, we don't tally up the results to find out whoever's most popular here. Instead, we hope you can take the time to wade through the selections and find some undiscovered gems or records you just didn't know came out this year. Or maybe you'll find some comfort that one of your faves is here or get mad that some albums you hated made the list. In any case, let the musical conversations and arguments flow. Enjoy!

Colin Buttimer

Actress Splazsch

Akira Rabelais Caduceus

ANBB Mimikry

Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea

David Sylvian Sleepwalkers

Demdike Stare Tryptych

Dino Saluzzi El Encuentro

Food Quiet Inlet

Francois Couturier Un Jour Si Blanc

John Foxx Cathedral Oceans (reissue)

Oneohtrix Point Never Returnal

Stereolab Not Music

Steve Tibbetts Natural Causes

Stian Westerhus Pitch Black Star Spangled

The Knife Tomorrow In A Year

Underworld Barking

Various Vertical Integration (Second Language)

Anders Bylund

OK Go Of the Blue Color of the Sky (Don't you just love jangly indie-rock tunes like This Too Shall Pass?)

The Apples In Stereo Travellers in Space and Time (It only took two decades to find mainstream success.)

Not a lot of music from germany on my list. At least I bought the first NEU!-Record on vinyl as reissue, but it sort of sucks to put them on the best of 2010-list. There was much more very good music on my turntable this year. I'd rather mention a very good film: Un prophet by Jacques Audiard, nominated for an oscar, which it deserved, but didn't get. Life is unkind.

Turbonegro Retox

Lonelady Nerve Up

John Zorn Filmworks XXI

Cyanide Pills Cyanide Pills

Harlem Hippies

The Bundles The Bundles

Holly Golightly and The Brokeoffs Medicine County

Giant Sand Provisions

Black Keys Brothers

Low Anthem Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Schwabinggrad Ballett Schwabinggrad Ballett

Bert Jaensch The Black Swan

The Flying Lizards The Secret Dub Life of the Flying Lizards

Little Women Throat

Frazey Ford Obadiah

Robert Wilkins That's No Way To Get Along

Mississippi John Hurt Blessed Be The Name

Dum Dum Girls I Will Be

Les Georges Leningrad Sur les Traces de Black Eskimo

Black Strobe A Remix Collection

Dead Brothers 5th Sin-Phonie

Gary Gomes

King Crimson In the Court of the Crimson King (reissue)

The Nice Fillmore East, 1969

Frank Zappa Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1978.

Soft Machine Drop

Hatfield and the North (reissue)

Sonny Rollins Way Out West (reissue)

Captain Beefheart The Mirror Man Sessions and Safe As Milk (I would
like to vote for Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals
Off, Baby", two of the greatest albums ever made, in memoriam of Don Van
Vliet, who passed on December 17, 2010.) (reissues)

Henry Cow Box Set (yes, I know it was 2009, but I didn't vote last year)

Magma Box Set (see Henry Cow above)

Genesis 1970-1975 (see above)

Simak Dialog (any release)

Soft Machine Legacy (any release)

The Great Kat (any release)

A few of my releases are from 2009. I started a doctoral program in
2009; I missed some things.

Punk seems to gain more ascendancy as the economy winds down. I am one
of those people who lived through punk and can see "little redeeming
social value" in it, its antecedents, or its successors. Weirder or more
experimental forms enjoy greater popularity when the economy is better,
proving Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption.
Beefheart, Willem Breuker, and (a personal loss for me) Enrique
Jardines, friend, bass player and composer of Absolute Zero. I am paying
more attention to people like Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Peter
Brotzmann, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. I hope they all live as long as
Elliot Carter.

Soft Machine, Vanilla Fudge (better than you remembered), Sonny Rollins,
Captain Beefheart, Cecil Taylor (with the Art Ensemble of Chicago),
early Genesis (better than you knew), and even recent Magic Band
(without Beefheart) videos are now available on You Tube , as well as
Carl Ruggles's Sun Treader; and talking cats and sock monkeys. Good
times!

I enter 2011 with guarded optimism, that the economy will recover well
and we will have many new weird things to enjoy!

Rather than necessarily my favourites of the year, I thought I’d list, alphabetically, 20 albums, including a couple from South Africa, worth seeking out that might otherwise have been missed unless one was paying fairly close attention.

Sam Amidon I See The Sign

Barn Owl Ancestral Star

Benguela Black Southeaster

The Black Twig Pickers Ironto Special

Chicago Underground Duo Boca Negra

Marilyn Crispell / David Rothenberg One Dark Night I Left My Silent House

Food Quiet Inlet

Otis Gibbs Joe Hill’s Ashes

Erdem Helvacioglu & Per Boysen Sub City 2064

Micah P. Hinson Micah P. Hinson & the Pioneer Saboteurs

Carlo Mombelli & the Prisoners of Strange Theory

Mountain Man Made The Harbor

Doug Paisley Constant Companion

The Parting Gifts Strychnine Dandelion

Emily Portman The Glamoury

Tamikrest Adagh

Cath & Phil Tyler The Hind Wheels Of Bad Luck

Various Music Of Central Asia Vols 7-9

Various Next Stop ... Soweto Vols 1-3

Chris Wood Handmade Life

Billy Hell

Swans My Father will guide me up a rope to the sky (limited edition double disc tour version)

Bardo Pond Bardo Pond

Rangda False Flag

Dead C Patience

Killing Joke Absolute Dissent

Left to right: Naked on the Vague, Carlo Mombelli, Barn Owl

Domenic Maltempi

Purling Hiss Hissteria

The Fresh and Onlys Play it Strange
Lime goes in the brown stuff--dates swim team beauty before rancid rain storm destroys earth and its groves

These New Puritans Hidden
They mean it- and its classical rubber on long legs—wonderfully shod to kick you evasively and without guile --- J. G Ballard canopy fight--- for the last licks of radiating bright stuff.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists The Brutalist Bricks

Flying Lotus Cosmogramma
Keep giving this sort of birth.

No Age Everything In Between
A grower, a stain(er) -- a well dyed sunset

The Art Museums Rough Frame

Gonjasufi A Sufi and a Killer

Ariel Pinks Haunted Graffiti Before Today

Twin Sister Color your life EP

Moon Duo Escape

Owen Pallett Heartland
Both thoughtful and playful, mood regulating and mood altering — great anecdote to a lot of stuff lab led ‘indie’

The Alps Le Voyage

Deer Hunter Halcyon Digest

100 Jahre Einsankeit Markus Detmer Plays Staubgold

Caribou Swim

Deer Hunter Halcyon Digest
A beautiful record in many ways. It’s obvious why it didn’t burn the oh so hidden new tastemakers tongue with its crepitating sling shot body

Art Museums Rough Frame

James Nadal

Cachete Maldonado y los Majaderos Rumba Boricua Campesina

Jeff Lorber Fusion Now Is The Time

Miss Sophie Lee Tallulah Moon

Lynn Baker QuartetAzure Intention

Pedro Bermudez No Limits

Amiona Figarova Sketches

Regina Carter Reverse Thread

Ray Vega & Thomas Marriot East-West trumpet Summit

Willie Hones III The Next Phase

Azar Lawrence Mystic Journey

Brettina Brettina

Yanvablue Haitian Earthquake Relief

Fidel Morales & Proyecto Nega Salsa Son Timba (re-release)

Message to Venus EP

Jack Partain

State Champion Stale Champagne

The Gay Blades Savages

The Black Keys Brothers

Beach House Teen Dream

Isobel Campbel and Mark Lanegan Hawk

any bootleg recording of that Lou Reed / Laurie Anderson concert in Australia that only dogs could hear

Randy Patterson

Santana Guitar Heaven

Nili Brosh Through The Looking Glass

Eric Clatpon Clapton

Pearl Little Immaculate White Fox

Bruce Kulick BK3

Peter Frampton Thank Your Mr. Churchill

Jimi Hendrix Valleys of Neptune

The Dave Getz Breakaway Can’t Be The Only One

Eclypse Something To Believe In

Gary Wright Connected

Bada** Black Robot

Lo-Pro The Beautiful Sounds of Revenge

Carole King & James Taylor Live At The Troubadour

Marc Philips

Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid

The Black Keys Brothers

Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street (deluxe 2010 reissue)

Morrissey Bona Drag (20th anniversary version)

Boy Eats Drum Machine 20 Beats

Big Boi Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty

Campfire OK Strange Like We Are

Brian Eno Small Craft on a Milk Sea

John Mellencamp No Better Than This

DJ DUS Soy Yo

Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Tom Jones Praise and Blame

Deerhunter Halcyon Digest

Arcade Fire The Suburbs

Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise

Sufjan Stevens The Age of Adz

Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone

Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer

REM Fables of the Reconstruction (25th anniversary version)

LCD Soundsystem This Is Happening

Diane Roka

Top 5 Concerts for Drawings in 2010

Charlotte Gainsbourg -- IRM Theater of the Living Arts -- January 22, 2010

Ray LaMontagne -- God Willing and the Creek Won't Rise World Cafe Live "Free at Noon" -- August 20, 2010

This year, artists I like--Los Lobos, Spoon, Laura Veirs, Rufus Wainwright--put out decent, occasionally great efforts that don't measure up to their best work. Live music meant a lot more to me than new recordings:

Hallogallo 2010: Performing the music of Michael Rother and Neu!, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, 8/6 - Rother and friends' motoric grooves were repetitious by nature, hypnotic in a druggy way, unsatisfying only in that there were no encores.

Spiritualized: Performing Ladies and Gentleman, We Are Floating in Space @ Radio City Music Hall, 7/30: A strong case for the CD as a tone poem or something like that.

Edgard Varese: International Contemporary Ensemble, So Percussion, the New York Philharmonic, and others performing (R)evolution [complete works], 7/19-20 - An education and a once-in-a-lifetime experience?

Roger Waters: Performing The Wall at Madison Square Garden, 10/6 - A brilliant showman, Waters did justice to his masterpiece.

The Wedding Present: Performing selected songs and Bizarro in its entirety at South Street Seaport, 8/13 - Dave Gedge's rhythm guitar is a force of nature.